One important aspect of our society is the continuing development of technology to store and/or transmit digital information or data. With particular regard to storage technology, it is important that the storage devices or apparatuses be capable of either deleting information stored or of being disabled or destroyed so that information or data cannot be used by others or in unintended ways. For example, for a compact disc read only memory (CD-ROM), there are known devices for destroying the information-bearing layer of a CD-ROM. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,954,569, 6,039,637, and 6,334,582.
A digital vertical disc (“DVD ”) is a relatively new optical medium, which holds from about seven (4.7 GB) to twenty-eight (17.1 GB) times the information or data that a CD-ROM can hold. The DVD is a high capacity CD-size disc for video, multimedia, games, and audio applications, usually, but not always, in an 8 or 12 cm diameter format. While a CD-ROM disc has the information layer on the surface of a polycarbonate substrate, the information layer of some types of DVD's is contained inside two layers of polycarbonate, which have been bonded together. There are also two types of erasable DVD discs called DVD-RW, which stands for DVD Re-Write, and DVD RAM which stands for DVD Random Access Memory. All of these DVD media types, except DVD-RW, have the information containing layer inside two pieces of polycarbonate. The objective of this invention is to access the information containing layer of DVD media which has the information content of the media inside two or more protective layers for the purposes of rendering the information content unusable. There is a need for a simple and efficient way to disable the information layer on a DVD, and after the DVD is disabled, to be able to ascertain that the information can no longer be used.